Sunday Adventure

The other day I went with one of my friends/coworkers, Masha, to go volunteer at a dog shelter by her house. I managed to adventure all the way to the other side of the city and was extremely proud of myself. I had to take the metro and a marshrutka, which is like a communal taxi. Marshrutkas are a little more complicated than taking the bus cause you actually have to tell the driver to stop at the next stop, so you have to know where you're getting off, which I only vaguely knew. Masha told me to go to the hospital, and luckily the woman sitting next to me was going there too. So I made it to the right place without getting lost once!

This is a marshrutka. They're basically terrifying minibuses.

Masha gave me the grand tour of her apartment and I met her brother and then we headed to the shelter. There was a fire recently, so the shelter is actually mostly gates and collections of handmade dog houses and it's kinda sad looking. But there were a bunch of people there taking care of the dogs, building back the shelter, donating food. It was a cool little community place. All we had to do was show up and say we wanted to walk some dogs and they brought us in and sent two dogs out. No system or anything, just, "Here you go, bye."
We walked through the woods, which was basically just made up of birch trees and was really pretty. From there, we walked along a stream next to a whole bunch of dachas (country/vacation houses). I got a few pictures that weren't great, so I'll have to go back and get a whole bunch of all the different dachas. But we walked all through the little dacha village until we got to the river. The river here is called the Ob and it runs down the center of the city. The dogs were thrilled to get some splashing in, so we hung out there for a little while before we turned around and went back.

Here's me and Doc the dog in front of the river
 

On our way back, we walked past an abandoned lot next to some apartment buildings and we found this guy:

Me with the random horse hanging out in the abandoned lot

I guess Russia hadn't been weird enough for me that day. Just when I think these seem pretty normal around here, something always shows up.